​Anonymous hacktivist deported back to US after failed asylum bid

A United States military veteran who claims he was interrogated and tortured by American officials as part of an alleged investigation into online groups WikiLeaks and Anonymous has been deported from Canada to face child porn charges in the US.

Matt DeHart, 30, was
moved from a prison cell in Ontario early Sunday and handed off
to American officials at the US-Canada border, the National Post
reported. Court documents obtained by RT
confirm that DeHart fled the US for Canada in April 2013 in a
failed attempt to be granted refugee status and was scheduled to
be sent back to the States on or after March 1 to stand trial
against charges in Tennessee.

Motion filed Feb. 24 says Matt Dehart would be taken to
Tennessee this week and entered into pretrial detention
https://t.co/vsXz5xqKZx

DeHart has faced child pornography charges in the US since
2010, and last year he was hit with another count stemming from his failure to
appear at a 2013 court hearing concerning the matter. According
to DeHart, however, those charges have all been filed to cover up
an undercover national security investigation waged separately by
US authorities concerning the hacktivist movement Anonymous and
whistleblower website WikiLeaks.

A lengthy probe undertaken by National Post journalist Adrian
Humphreys and published in multiple installments last year
suggests there is much more to DeHart’s story than child porn
charges: According to those reports, DeHart was arrested in 2010
at the US-Canada border and then interrogated at length by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation about a visit he had made to the
Russian embassy in Washington, DC. FBI documents confirm that
DeHart was indeed asked about his DC trip as a matter of national
security, Humphreys reported, but two other interrogation
sessions are classified and, according to DeHart, may detail the
conversations he had concerning Anonymous and WikiLeaks.

DeHart “told the Post he was an early member of Anonymous,
helping the hacktivists’ nascent anti-Scientology campaign in
2008,” Humphreys wrote last year. “He said he also ran a
computer server on the Tor network, the so-called hidden
Internet, used for the anonymous posting of documents. A
classified FBI report about the CIA was posted on his server, he
said, which he believes was being forwarded to WikiLeaks.”

Soon after he was apprehended at the border, DeHart’s Indiana
home was raided and his computers confiscated, leading
authorities to charge him first with two counts of child
pornography in October 2010.

“Between on or about January 1, 2008 and on or about August
31, 2008, in the Middle District of Tennessee and elsewhere,
Matthew Dehart knowingly employed, used, persuaded, included,
enticed and coerced a minor to engage in sexually explicit
conduct for the purpose of producing any visual depiction of such
conduct, knowing or having reason to know that such visual
depictions would be transported in interstate commerce,”
Brett Kniss, an officer with the Franklin, TN Police Department’s
Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, alleged in a 2010
affidavit.

DeHart was ultimately released on bail, the Post reported, but he
and his family fled the US for Canada before a trial could begin
in hopes of being protected against supposed political
persecution. A motion to dismiss the pornography charges
filed by his then-lawyer in 2012 said the government should drop
their case because DeHart “was involuntarily drugged and tortured
by law enforcement officers in an effort to extract information,”
but the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada said last month
that there are “reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. DeHart
committed offenses in the United States” and would soon be
reported.

My son is back in the hands of the US Gov't again..I pray for
God to protect him #freemattdehart

“Our son is innocent of the charges against him in the US and
is a victim of torture,” his parents said in a statement
last month, the Post reported.

On Sunday, Paul DeHart – Matt’s father – told the Post that his
son was “peaceful and in good health,” albeit in the
custody of American officials.

“We are concerned about Matt’s safety as he transits,”
he said. “We said a prayer together on the phone and gave him
into God’s hands for protection.”

Supporters who have started a social media campaign for DeHart
said that appeared before a US federal magistrate Monday
afternoon in Buffalo, New York, near the Canadian border and was
ordered to be arraigned in Tennessee.